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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29863893">Sonnet 130</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous_yet_again/pseuds/anonymous_yet_again'>anonymous_yet_again</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Developing Relationship, Light Angst, M/M, Miscommunication, Shakespearean Sonnets, like exceedingly light</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 01:06:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,838</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29863893</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous_yet_again/pseuds/anonymous_yet_again</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>January is surprised to realize how fond he is becoming of Shaw, and discusses it with Hannibal.  Shaw overhears some of this, but only some, and unfortunately comes away with exactly the wrong idea about January's feelings.</p><p>(Or, can I take a Shakespeare sonnet and a misunderstanding worthy of a romcom, and create a short little gay romance set in another author's 1830s New Orleans?  I can sure try!)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Benjamin January/Abishag Shaw</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Sonnet 130</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I am still waiting on the 4th book in this series to arrive in the library for me! Until I've read more than the first 3, I don't want to write much with Rose, because I want to see what happens with her and January in canon.  But I'm pretty sure anything like <i>this</i> story is never happening in canon; and I wrote it, so I figured I'd publish.</p><p>This is either set in an alternate timeline where a romance between Rose and January never really happens; or in one where they already have some sort of previously discussed, poly-like ~understanding~.  All 10 or so hardcore Benjamin January fans who read this are free to take their pick.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was a summer day in New Orleans, and Benjamin January was making a confession; not, as he regularly did, to a Catholic priest, but to Hannibal Sefton as they stood on the gallery outside January’s garçonnière.  The season was early enough that Livia Levesque was still away in Milneburgh, but late enough that being outdoors actually provided a slight relief from the heat.</p><p>January was making this particular confession to Hannibal because it was something he was unsure about sharing with a priest, as yet.  He’d prayed about it, of course, but he had doubts as to its reception by holy figures other than the Virgin Mary.  Also, he needed someone to talk to.</p><p>“Lieutenant Shaw,” said Hannibal, musingly.  “Since I’m not blind, I won’t say I’m surprised, as such--”</p><p>“Please be a little surprised,” said January.</p><p>“Well, it’s not anything anyone else would notice,” said Hannibal.  This was probably true.  Hannibal had learned Augustus Mayerling’s secret through a few minutes of very little conversation; he noticed things.  “And most of the town knows you two are friends, at this point.”</p><p>“That’s true,” said January, ruefully.  Being friends with a policeman was useful in some circles, and detrimental in others.</p><p>“When I say I noticed,” said Hannibal, “I didn’t just mean your own actions.  I wouldn’t be surprised if your feelings are reciprocated.”</p><p>January, if he was honest with himself, wouldn’t have been surprised either.  He still took a second to respond, leaning back against the railing of the gallery.  Hannibal, whose consumption seemed to be going into a tentative relapse but who, as always, was not totally well, either, was sitting in a chair in the doorway to Bella’s room, which he was occupying for the summer.</p><p>“Mind you,” said Hannibal, accepting January’s silence as a response in itself, “if I hadn’t known you both for the past few years, and watched you interact; well, if, without any of that, you pointed Shaw out to me in a crowd and said, ‘That one,’ I can’t say I wouldn’t be a little taken aback.”</p><p>“I, too, am a little taken aback,” said January drily.</p><p>“Maybe you could convince him to bathe more than once a year,” said Hannibal, a man who regularly ended up in gutters in the Swamp.</p><p>“Or at least get rid of the fleas,” said January, musingly.</p><p>“Myself, I appreciate a little padding when I lay my head on someone’s chest,” Hannibal went on, warming to the subject.</p><p>“He <i>does</i> seem to be made solely of bones and scar tissue,” said January.  “So much so that I wonder sometimes if he has more bones or joints than other humans.”</p><p>“Do you think shaving would improve his face at all?” said Hannibal.</p><p>“He isn’t classically handsome,” agreed January, thinking of Shaw’s face.  Long and narrow, perennially dirty and unshaven, with his deep-set light eyes; eyes that, somehow, January could always read the emotions in.  “And yet--”</p><p>“‘<i>My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun</i>,” said Hannibal, teasing.</p><p>“I think that’s enough of that one,” said January, moving jokingly as though he would stop Hannibal physically from continuing with the sonnet.  Startlingly, Hannibal, who would happily declaim full dialogues to Kentucky Williams and her girls, none of whom particularly appreciated them, did stop, glancing out at whatever had been revealed in the yard when January moved, and then up at January, looking concerned.  The reason for his expression was revealed before January could ask.</p><p>“I hate to interrupt what sounds like a divertin’ conversation,” said a familiar light voice from below.</p><p>January turned and looked over the railing into the rain-gray eyes of Abishag Shaw, and didn’t know what emotion to read there.</p><p>“I had a question for you, Maestr--Mr. January,” said Shaw.  “No, don’t come down,” he added, when January made for the stairs, “I reckon we can hear each other well enough from here.”  This was not a promising start.</p><p>Neither was the rest of the conversation.  “I’m seekin’ a potential witness,” said Shaw, and named someone who January truly had never heard of.  He said so, and apologized.  Shaw shrugged, tipped his verminous hat--a move that, societally, January did not merit and, personally, he also felt a bit guilty about--and left.  Somehow, despite walking with his usual ambling gait, he seemed to make it out of the yard quite quickly.</p><p>“How much do you think he heard?” said January, turning back to Hannibal.</p><p>“I suspect,” said Hannibal, looking apologetic, “at least the part where we took turns insulting him.”</p><p> </p><p>In a perfect world, January would have gone that night, or at least the next day, and taken a long walk with Shaw along the levee, where he would have apologized and more, and Shaw would, in fact, have reciprocated, and that would have been that.  There were many ways that New Orleans was far from existing in a perfect world, and this was one of them.</p><p>After a few days, January suspected that Shaw was avoiding him.  Every time he swung by the Cabildo, the Lieutenant somehow managed to be out on patrol.  He was used to running across Shaw in the street semi-regularly, as well, as he went about his normal music lessons and performances, but somehow this failed to happen.  At least once, January turned into a road and saw a familiar scarecrow-shaped silhouette at the other end of it, turning a corner away with deceptive speed.  January didn’t want to be seen looking for Shaw remarkably often, so he tried to leave a reasonable amount of time between each of his visits to the Cabildo, and Shaw kept being gone.  Which is why they didn’t actually get a chance for a conversation until the next large keelboat crew came to town and started fights at three saloons in the Swamp at once.</p><p>January was, for once, not on site for the fights themselves, but he made it to the Cabildo in the direct aftermath.  “In the storage room, bleeding like a stuck pig,” said Constable Boetcher, in passing, when asked about Shaw.  Shaw, when January opened the door under the galleries around the courtyard, was indeed bleeding heavily, although not from any knife or gun wounds, as January had feared.  Instead, someone had either kicked or punched him very hard in the face, and his nose was gushing in consequence.</p><p>He didn’t require a surgeon’s assistance, but January went in and closed the door anyway, and knelt on the ground next to the single cot, where Shaw was sitting.  There was a pile of dubiously clean rags in front of him; January folded the top one, trying to get the cleanest side outermost, and helped Shaw exchange it for the one he was currently holding to his face, which was saturated.</p><p>It wasn’t the chance he would get in a perfect world, but it was the first one he’d gotten.  “Lieutenant Shaw,” said January carefully, unsure how formal to be.  “Have you been avoiding me?”</p><p>Over the bloody cloth covering the lower half of his face, Shaw’s pale eyes were as calculating as ever.  “Wouldn’t want you gettin’ fleas, Maestro,” he said.  “From gettin’ too close to me, belike.”</p><p>“Right,” said January, sitting back on his heels and offering another blood-free cloth.  “I understand that you heard some of the conversation Hannibal and I were having, and it <i>was</i> about you.  But--did you happen to hear, or recognize, the line Hannibal quoted right before we noticed your presence?”</p><p>Shaw shook his head gingerly, and accepted the cleaner cloth.  “Aside from my physical defects,” he said, “I am also lackin’ in what you might call a classical education.  Although I do seem to recollect Sefton was at least speaking English, instead of Greek.”</p><p>“I didn’t--I’m not concerned about your education,” said January.  “Try pinching the bridge of your nose.  I asked because, well, it might have explained some of the beginning part of the conversation, which I assume you missed.”</p><p>Rather than pinch his nose, Shaw moved the cloth he was currently holding, and spat blood onto the growing pile of bloody rags, on the floor opposite the clean ones.  “What was he sayin’, then?” he said eventually, replacing the cloth when his nose continued to trickle blood.</p><p>“It was a Shakespeare sonnet,” said January, “Sonnet 130.  I don’t have the whole thing memorized, like Hannibal does, but I know the general theme--it’s sort of a mockery of the courtly love sonnets from the time.”  Shaw’s face shuttered further when January said “mockery,” and he realized his mistake immediately.  “What I mean is,” he went on quickly, “it mocks the descriptions that others--and Shakespeare himself--would use--well, here, I remember the first few lines, anyway.”  Shaw’s face wasn’t any more open, but he hadn’t looked away, either.  January busied his hands folding another clean cloth, and recited, “‘<i>My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;/Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;/If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;/If hair be wires, black wires grow from her head</i>.”</p><p>“Not quite what you’d call a looker, his mistress,” said Shaw.</p><p>“She’s just a woman--a person,” said January.  He held up another cloth; Shaw took it and, since his nose seemed to be done bleeding, started haphazardly mopping blood out of his stubble.  “That’s his point, I think.  Just a person, not any more beautiful than any others.  But then there’s the final couplet: ‘<i>And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare/As any she belied with false compare</i>.”</p><p>“And what’s that mean, in today’s English?” said Shaw.  He looked like he thought he knew the answer.</p><p>“Well, that he loves his human-looking mistress, I think,” said January.  “In spite of her looks--maybe because of them.”</p><p>“Am I to take it,” said Shaw slowly, “that the first half of your confabulation with Sefton was more compliment'ry to me than the later part?”  He’d given up on getting any more of the blood off his face, and was sitting with the half-dirtied rag loosely in one bony hand.</p><p>“That depends,” said January, standing up only to sit on the cot next to Shaw.  “On whether you consider my...affections, and appreciations, a compliment.  May I?” he held out a hand towards the rag Shaw was holding.</p><p>“I consider those,” said Shaw, still speaking slowly as he chose his words, “a compliment worth returnin’.”  He handed the rag over, and turned his face toward January.</p><p>“I think this blood is set,” said January, a minute or so later.  “You’ll need to wash it off.  How’s your nose?”</p><p>Shaw waved away any concern about his nose, and grinned.  “Maestro,” he said, “is this your attempt at gettin’ me to bathe more’n oncet a year?”</p><p>“That depends,” said January, standing up and holding out a hand to Shaw.  “Is it working?”</p><p>Shaw didn’t need any help standing up off the cot, of course.  But he took January’s hand anyway.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I like how Hambly writes about the real social issues and pressures of the setting but also has a little enclave of characters who seem to sort of agree that certain societal norms are dumb, and that they will (when only with each other) do their best to ignore them.  Of course Shaw and Ben can't just go out in public and start holding hands here; but I decided not to focus on that whole side of it because this is mostly supposed to be fun and silly.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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